While everyone else has been fumbling for their m-wallets, eBay and its PayPal have been very aggressively moving into the point of sale. With announcements yesterday involving retailers and payments
infrastructure, they may become a real contender offline. ...Read the whole story

What do you get when you give consumers the ability to access the full HTML Internet, over-the-top (OTT) video services, apps and TV Everywhere from mobile devices? A significantly reduced incentive for them to pay for dedicated carrier-based mobile video services, according to new research from SNL Kagan. ...Read the whole story

Target says it is taking its relationship with Shopkick national, and will now accept the app at all its stores. Shopkick allows users to earn points as they shop, redeeming them for rewards and discounts at participating stores nationwide. ...Read the whole story

Google is giving developers the ability to sell recurring subscriptions via its in-app billing service. Meanwhile, Apple has added new merchandising categories to its app store to aid discovery. ...Read the whole story

If there's one thing the late Steve Jobs may have gotten wrong as CEO of Apple, Inc., it would be the decision not to build or acquire a YouTube competitor. As Google, now firmly established as one of Apple's main competitors, only just begins to monetize the video-sharing site it bought for $1.65 billion in 2006, Apple execs must be ruing that day in 2007 when the company decided to tout how beautifully its iPhone would display YouTube videos. ...Read the whole story

Around The Net

Dubbed Camera, Facebook just released an iPhone app that lets users take photos, add filters to them, and share them on the social network. Naturally, Web watchers are asking why the company needs another photo app after expressing an interest in buying Instagram for about $1 billion. “To us geeks who follow everything that’s going on in the tech industry, it might initially seem a little odd that Facebook would have, want, or need two camera apps,” writes respected tech analyst Dan Frommer. “But it actually makes sense,” he writes on his SplatF blog. “Facebook Camera is for creating photos, ... ...Read the whole story

Having the ability to tap into location-based information for travelers can aid in finding shelter, food and water in an unfamiliar place. eMarketer points us to a Q1 2012 report by mobile-local ad network xAd found that nearly 50% of all local travel searches completed on a mobile device in the U.S. were related to transportation. The search data in categories of hotels and lodging, car rentals and airlines, found high click-through rates, such as 17.8% for airlines, 17% for car rentals, and nearly 10% for hotels and lodging. ...Read the whole story

Far from harming consumers, Apple's entry into the sale of digital books offered people "a new outstanding, innovative eBook reading experience, an expansion of categories and titles of eBooks, and competitive prices," the company contends in ...More

At The Cable Show this week, Cox Communications President Patrick Esser referred to Netflix and its Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos -- on the same panel -- as a "frenemy." It's one of those comments that ...More